Investigators to verify MH370 evidence

A defense ministry laboratory in Toulouse, France is starting an analysis of the wing part recovered on the island of La Reunion. Representatives from Malaysia, the US, China, France and Boeing are to take part in the verification of the flaperon, according to a statement from the Malaysian government.

Other items found on the island in the Indian Ocean on Sunday were not from an aircraft.

Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said civil aviation authorities were contacting other Indian Ocean territories to be on the lookout for further debris that could provide "more clues to the missing aircraft."

Jean-Yves Sambimanan, spokesman for the town of Saint-Andre where the wing debris was found said: "People are more vigilant. They are going to think any metallic object they find on the beach is from flight MH370, but there are objects all along the coast. The ocean continually throws them up."

Liow confirmed that the wing part sent to France was from a Boeing 777. Flight MH370 is the only Boeing 777 to be lost at sea.

Paris meeting

Four Malaysian officials, including the head of civil aviation, are in Paris together with officials from Malaysia Airlines for a meeting on Monday with three French magistrates and an official from France's civil aviation investigating authority.

"I urge all parties to allow this crucial investigation process to take its course," Liow said. "I reiterate this is for the sake of the next of kin of the loved ones of MH370 who would be anxiously awaiting news and have suffered much over this time."

"We will make an announcement once the verification process has been completed," the minister added.

Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

jm/gsw (AFP, AP)